Wouldn't you like to find a non-arbitrary standard for evaluating human progress? You can. Humans are a mess, but you can define their ecology, their life support system, and it is far more definable. That in turn defines what a human needs to be to adapt to it. What helps with adaptation to that ecology is progress.

I've spent decades working out how: humans can adapt genetically and strategically for long term survival and development in the new ecology we have been creating to replace the hunter-gather ecology we left for the cities and farms of civilization. I wrote "Genetics For A New Human Ecology" (needs an update re-write) and am currently working on "Strategy For A New Human Ecology". We do need to change whether we want to or not. Some things have happened that will be almost impossible to overcome if we do not make the Transition To A New Human Ecology now. ... The thing is though that what we have called human progress includes the removal of Natural Selection. No species can survive that. It will crate a genetic load we cannot survive, that they are currently detecting in the UK Bio Bank. They call it "prenetration", but it is a load of broken genes that would normally be removed by natural selection. The rate of birth defects and sterility will rise rapidly since this is happening at the same time as parents are older and families are smaller, so there are more de novo mutations each generation than is even usual. We need to husband our genes, but it will have to be easy, cheap and ethical or people won't do it. My genetics book says how to do thaat. I am then hoping if people are used to guiding their genetic destiny, they will be comfortable guiding their strategic destiny. ... That's the other book. Humanity can have an amazing future in an amazing garden.

At times I feel like Prometheus though. I have taken fire from the Gods and offered it to humanity. Humans are just barely starting to see the need for fire though. They say "that looks good", but do not understand how critical it is. I guess I sometimes fear I will fail, not to provide the fire, but to persuade people to use it to save themselves and create the bright future humanity can have.